


those who wait

by sospes



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 17:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sospes/pseuds/sospes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fili knows that his brother is the one he was meant to love. It takes Kili a little bit longer to work it out for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	those who wait

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on _The Hobbit_ kink meme on LJ.

Fili wakes up one morning and just _knows_. 

It’s not a revelation that comes in a flash of light, a bolt of lightning – he doesn’t spend hours puzzling over the beating of his heart, the flutters in his stomach. He just opens his eyes to the firelight under Ered Luin, looks across to his brother, asleep in the next bed, and that’s it: he’s lost. For a moment he lies still, watching Kili’s chest rise and fall, and all he wants to do is touch him, run his fingers through his hair, curl up beside him and watch him sleep—

And suddenly there’s bile in his throat.

Fili gets out of bed, pulls his clothes on. He’s rushing, leaving his shirt half-open and his hair unbraided, and all he can think is _no, please, no_ – because he might be young but he’s not a fool, and he knows what this awful, beautiful feeling in his heart is. Before he really knows what’s happening he’s running, barefoot and wild, and he’s pushing past his mother and barrelling through the chambers beneath the mountains like nothing more than an animal. 

When he stops, his own breathing is stale in his ears and he clutches at his chest, fingers rending into his skin. He’s outside and it’s cold: the sky is blue but the trees are golden, and the sun jealously guards its warmth. Fili doesn’t care, and he sits on the rocky hillside and watches the towns of men below, smoke churning from their rooftops to dance in the sky. He presses the heel of his hand into his forehead. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. 

He thinks about Kili, and his heart races faster, faster. 

“Fili?” Dis’ voice is gentle, her hand on his shoulder even more so, and suddenly he feels so stupid – running away like some lovestruck elf to sigh in the woods. “May I sit with you?” 

“Of course,” he answers automatically, and shifts to give her space beside him. She sits close and takes his hands in hers, wrapping him in warmth and affection – and it’s all he can do to not run away again. His cheeks are flushed red. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

She squeezes his hands. “I’m your mother,” she says. “You need never be sorry to me. Now tell me: what’s troubling you?” 

Fili can’t meet her gaze. _I’m in love_ : it sounds pathetic even in his head, and so he shuffles his feet and stares at the sky, and all the while she sits, quiet and patient, and her thumb rubs soft circles on the back of his hand. He says, “I think— I mean, I woke up and, well, there was this... ache. In my heart.” 

And he’s rolling his eyes even as he’s saying it, but Dis goes very still for a moment, her eyes bright and sad. “Did I ever tell you about when I met your father?” she says, and there’s a smile in her voice. “It was at a feast, back in Erebor. I spent the evening with your uncle, eating everything in sight and playing tricks on grandfather.” She pauses, and her hands warm. “Then this young dwarf came stumbling towards us. He was drunk—his beard was a mess and there was trifle of all things all down his legs—and he came up to me, did the deepest bow I’ve ever seen, and said, ‘My lady, I’m going to marry you.’” Dis laughs softly, and despite himself Fili is fascinated: his parents don’t talk about this kind of thing, not really, and the image of his father caked in trifle is one he won’t be forgetting any time soon. “The cheek!” Dis continues. “Thorin very nearly had him carted off to the cells – but then he smiled at me, this huge, beaming smile, and...” She shrugs. “That was it for me. I’d found my one, and he’d found his.” He can feel her looking at him, soft and loving. “That’s what you’re feeling, isn’t it?” she asks. “You know.” 

“Yes,” he mumbles. “Yes.” 

She’s quiet for a moment, and then says, “Can you tell me?” 

_Kili_ , Fili thinks. _Kili. My brother. I’m in love with my brother, and I will never love another._ He’s shaking, and Dis’ touch is steady and calm. “No,” he says, tight and short. “No, I can’t. It’s too—” He breaks off, finds his fingertips are dug into his thigh. “It’s not—” 

His breathing is loud in his ears. 

“Oh, Fili,” Dis murmurs, and she smoothes his hair back, tucks it around his ears. He feels like a child again, and there’s nothing he wants more than to disappear into his mother’s arms and hide from the world – but he can’t, because she’s always known her sons better than they’ve known themselves. “It’s your brother.” 

And Fili screws his eyes shut, feels his shoulders hunch tight. 

Dis rubs soothing circles on his back. “Oh, my sweet boy,” she murmurs. “Are you going to tell him?”

“No,” Fili blurts out. “Never. I can’t. It’s not fair on him: he’s too young. He shouldn’t have to deal with that, with me. I’ll just go—” And he stops, because he’s never been able to imagine life without his brother before.

“You can’t leave, Fili,” Dis says quietly. “That’s not fair on either of you.” 

Fili stares out over the treetops. “What else can I do?” he asks, and he hates the way his voice shakes. 

“Endure,” Dis says, and takes his hand. “Love him, and endure.” 

And Fili knows that there’s no other option. 

They sit in silence for a long while, out on the hillside, and birds squawk overhead. The day is cool, the breezes tug at Fili’s loose shirt, but he hardly notices, hardly cares. In the end Dis takes his hand, pulls him to his feet, leads him back into the mountain – and the moment they return home Kili is everywhere, wide-eyed and worried, and he grabs Fili’s shirt, says, “I woke up and you weren’t there, brother. Where did you go?” 

Fili feels Dis squeeze his hand tight then let go, but it’s like he’s dreaming it. Kili radiates heat, his hair is mussed and in his eyes, and his concern makes Fili’s heart thud louder, louder. “On the mountainside,” he finally manages. “I needed some air. Didn’t mean to worry you.”

Kili thumps his chest. “Sighing like a lovestruck elf?” he asks, and the smile on his lips is so unaware of the truth in his words. 

Fili forces a smile. “Something like that,” he says, and shoves past his brother to their bedroom. 

Unhelpfully, Kili follows him. As Fili dresses properly, Kili says, “Uncle says they’ve uncovered a new vein in the mines – gold, he thinks, or maybe even mithril. He says we should go down and see: I waited for you.”

Fili’s fingers falter on the fastening of his trousers, and for a moment he thinks about saying _no, never, go without me and never speak to me again_ – but Kili’s eyes are wide and excited and he’s practically bouncing at the end of Fili’s bed. It makes his heart hurt – but it’s a good hurt, satisfying and rich, like pressing a thumb deep into a fresh bruise. Fili says, “Sounds good. Let me get my boots on.” 

They spend the day deep in the bowels of the mountain, helping to pull shards of gold from the rock, older dwarves chuckling into their beards at Kili’s boundless enthusiasm. Fili is quieter, following in his brother’s footsteps and stopping him from tripping into as-yet uncharted chasms – but when they take to wandering the miners’ tunnels side by side, never speaking but never needing to, Kili stops, turns to him, and says, “You’re not happy.” 

It’s such a simple statement and it ignores so many of the thoughts that are racing through Fili’s head, but at its heart it’s completely, painfully true. Fili closes his eyes, just briefly, and says, “I suppose not. Sorry.” 

Kili’s eyes are bright. “No problem,” he says. “You’re always boring anyway. Want to talk about it?” 

There’s nothing Fili’s ever wanted to do less, but he thinks about Kili with freshly-hewn gold in his hands and Kili laughing as he careens towards a one-way journey downwards, and something snaps in his heart. He says, “I think I found my one.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

Fili almost laughs. “No,” he says, “not really.”

Kili looks confused, but he doesn’t press the point. 

They’re still in the dimness, torches flickering at evenly spaced intervals along the corridor, but Fili stares at his brother, memorising every angle of those too-fine features, every curl of that downy dwarfling beard – and oh, there’s a part of him that’s crying out to kiss him, to touch him, to declare his heart in every flowery way dwarves never do— But he doesn’t, because he can’t. It’s not Kili’s burden to bear. 

“We should keep going,” Fili says, and forces himself to keep his voice steady. “Mother’ll be waiting for us.” He starts walking, doesn’t wait for Kili to follow – but he does, of course, and before long they’re winding through the mountain, close enough for Fili to just reach out and take his brother’s hand. 

“You know,” Kili says after a while, “if you want me to, I can go beat them up.”

Fili’s thrown. “What?” he asks. 

“Whoever it is,” Kili clarifies. “Your one. If you’re not happy, then they must be upsetting you. I’ll beat them up: just give me a name.” He pauses for a second—Fili can almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain—and then continues, “Is it that girl in the kitchens? She always gives you double portions. I’ll get her.”

Fili laughs for the first time since he woke up that morning. “No, it’s not her,” he says, and slings his arm around Kili’s shoulders. The closeness is intoxicating, but he takes a breath, wraps his heart up and tucks it down deep. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.” 

And Kili’s smile is worth the hurt. 

The years pass. 

The first few months are hell. Fili hurts every waking moment, heart pounding against his ribs every time his brother smiles – and when Kili decides he wants to take up archery and nearly gets shot on the range, well, Fili thinks he might lose his mind. The fear, the worry, the love – it’s all too much, and he watches as the dwarves he grew up with find each other and fall into the rest of their lives together, and it’s like dying. 

Kili comes home one day with a split lip and a black eye, fear in his eyes and breath hiccupping in his throat. Their parents are furious, their uncle is outraged – but all Fili does is slip out quietly that night, find the older dwarf who hurt his brother, and smash him into the ground. Dis finds him cleaning blood off his knuckles, still shaking from adrenaline and rage, and doesn’t say a word. She dries his hands, and says, “Someone I knew once mocked your father to my face. I broke his arm.” It doesn’t necessarily make Fili feel better—he has nightmares about blood and screams and his brother’s terror for weeks after—but he understands, perhaps. As dwarves, this is what they are, all rage and hate and love, and it’s what they have to live with. 

Kili doesn’t grow up for a long time. He’s the baby of the family, always has been, and it’s a position he’s quite happy with: no responsibility, no duties, nothing to do save snipe at rabbits with his bow—an out-of-the-blue gift from their uncle—and dog his brother’s heels all day. Not that Fili does much to dissuade him: every moment they spend together is like a dagger in his heart, but every moment they are apart is so much worse. He takes what he can get: brotherly wrestling, friendly punching – and one day, five years after the moment Fili lost his heart, Kili asks him to teach him to braid his hair. They spend hours sitting together, hands woven through each other’s hair, and Fili finds himself looking for fault in his brother’s work just to prolong the moment. 

Kili’s fingers unweave the braids in his moustache, then piece them back together even better, and his eyes are full of laughter. 

That night, Fili can’t sleep. He watches Kili’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and he eventually gets up in the middle of the night, leaves. He spends hours padding the halls of Ered Luin, stone cool beneath his bare feet, and he finds himself on the mountainside with the sun rising. It’s winter: snow lies thick on the ground, and everything is bathed in the golden light of morning. Fili thinks about Kili’s hands in his hair, and he can hardly breathe. 

He’s back in bed by the time his brother wakes, and he pretends to be asleep when Kili whispers, “Hey, Fili. You awake?” Kili waits a moment for a response, but when he gets none he gets up, whistles to himself as he dresses. 

Fili closes his eyes to stop the tears. This is not who he is. He won’t be this weak. 

He spends the day getting drunk in a tavern, and when Kili finds him and drags him home, muttering something about brothers being idiots and their mother worrying herself sick, it’s all Fili can do to not just bury his face in his brother’s chest and never let him go. He’s drunk, he could explain it away – but he doesn’t, because even through a haze of ale and spirits he knows that it would hurt too much in the morning. 

Kili strips him, puts him to bed, runs a gentle hand through his hair. “Go to sleep, you idiot” he says affectionately. “I love you.” 

Fili punches him in the face. 

Their relationship is a little strained after that. Kili gets this wary look in his eyes every time Fili enters a room, and Fili can hardly look at him: it makes him sick to think that he hurt his brother, but yet he is in so much pain every moment of every day. He hates his brother, hates him for being too young and too naive, but at the same time he loves him more than all the gold under the ground. 

Dis takes him aside one day, says, “Your uncle has taken a job as a smith in one of the towns of men. He needs an extra set of hands, someone he can trust. He’s going to ask you to go with him.” 

Fili feels cold. “I can’t leave things like this,” he says, his voice choked. “I can’t leave—”

“You need some time away,” Dis interrupts. “It’s not forever. But you need to do this.” Her eyes are gentle, her touch firm. 

Fili thinks of his brother’s laugh, of his smile and his joy but then the hurt and confusion, the blood dripping from his nose, and slowly he nods, says, “Yes.” – and something lightens in his chest, a weight he’s been carrying for far too long. 

He leaves with Thorin three days later, his world carried on his back. He doesn’t see his brother for four years. 

They live practically on top of each other, their garret barely big enough for two narrow beds, their forge tiny and, when they get there, in a serious state of disrepair. They spend the first few weeks fixing the place up, but when Fili has spent five days solid scrubbing dirt off the walls and Thorin has found a cut-price anvil that only just fits the room, they open up shop. The name ‘Erebor’ might not mean much to these men but they know of the skill of dwarves, and trade is brisk: they shoe horses and forge swords, fix cooking pots and hammer helmets back into shape. They spend their nights in quiet companionship, their days in back-breaking work. 

Sometimes Fili can go days without thinking of his brother, and when he can’t, well, they make enough to afford the cleanest whores in the brothel. 

They’re hard at work in the muggy heat of the forge one day when Thorin says, “When we left Ered Luin, your mother told me why you were leaving.”

Fili blinks sweat out of his eyes, doesn’t look at his uncle. His heart is racing. “She did?” 

Thorin brings the hammer down on glowing steel, readjusts his grip. “Yes,” he answers. “And I received a letter from her yesterday.” He pauses, strikes the steel again. The world buzzes loud in Fili’s ears. “Kili wants to come and join us. With my permission.”

“There’s not enough room,” Fili says automatically, pleadingly. 

Thorin looks at him, finally, and his eyes are dark. “We’ve made enough that I can find a room elsewhere,” he answers. “Leave you two to the heat and the smell.” 

Fili looks up, says, “Please, uncle. I can’t.” 

Thorin’s gaze is steady. “I’ve already said yes,” he answers. 

That night, Fili gets raging drunk and loses himself between the thighs of the cheapest whore on offer. She whines far too loudly and pulls at his braids annoyingly hard, and he closes his eyes and doesn’t think of Kili. When he comes back to their room, a drunken mess and reeking of sex, Thorin just looks at him with those dark, disapproving eyes, rolls over and goes back to sleep. 

Kili arrives a week later, just as the sun is setting. His boots are stained, his hair tangled by the wind – and Fili remembers all the hurt, all the pain, all the grief, but then he sees his brother’s face for the first time in four years, and all he feels is joy. 

“I’ve missed you,” Fili blurts out before his head can tell him not to, and the smile that spreads across Kili’s lips in response sets his heart on fire. 

The three of them eat together, bread and fresh-roasted meat dripping its juices over their fingers, and then Thorin makes his excuses, leaves them alone. He’s found a room above the baker’s shop across the road, and it might be cramped by the townsfolk’s standards but compared to where they’ve been living these past few years it’s palatial – and for the first time in a very long while Fili is alone with his brother. They talk for a while, sat at opposite ends of the tiny table, and it’s as if nothing has changed, as if they never spent any time apart. They laugh and joke: Kili spins tales of the mountain, Fili elaborates on Thorin’s foibles. 

The stars come out. The sky blazes with pinpricks of light. 

Kili tugs his shoes off, sits on the end of the bed that was once Thorin’s. “Your hair is longer,” he says. 

Fili raises an eyebrow, shrugs off his jerkin. “Your voice is deeper,” he quips back, and it’s only when he says it that he realises it’s true. Kili is taller, broader, and his hair might still be wild and unbraided but the downy fuzz that used to colonise his chin is now a smattering of stubble, rough and messy. Fili wants to rub his hand across his brother’s chin, feel the scrape against his palm. He stays where he is. 

“True,” Kili admits, and unlaces just the top of his shirt. “It’s been four years, brother. I’ve done a lot of growing up.” And there’s something in his eyes, something dark and needy – but no, because it’s been so long and Fili isn’t going to mess this up, not now. Kili is his brother. That comes before everything. 

He pauses, jokily says, “I’m sorry I hit you.” 

Kili doesn’t smile. “I’m sorry I told you I loved you.” 

And the bottom drops out of Fili’s stomach – because Kili _knows,_ he must do, knows why Fili left, knows why he ran. Humiliation floods through him, because he tried so hard to not let his brother know, to keep his secret – this isn’t something Kili should have to deal with, not now, not ever. _Mother, why?_ Fili finds himself thinking, full of bitterness, and he’s moving before he can help himself, running again, and he won’t stop until he’s so far away—

Kili’s hand is on his arm, heavy and warm. “Stop,” he says, and for some reason his voice is shaking. “Brother, look at me.” 

Fili can do nothing but obey – and Kili’s face is so open, loss and regret and something Fili refuses to name scrawled across his features like mithril veined through black rock. 

“When you left,” Kili says, and his voice is so tight and so terrified, “I was so lost. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. Mother kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, not really, that you’d explain in time...” He’s shuddering, shaking. “I spent years waiting for you to come home, and you never did. For a long time, I thought I hated you.” Guilt floods Fili’s heart, sends him reeling. He wants to be sick. “And then,” Kili continues, his fingers flexing tighter around Fili’s arm, eyes pleading, “I woke up fifteen days ago this morning, looked over at the bed you used to sleep in, and I just _knew_. I knew why you did everything you did, because—” 

Kili breaks off, and Fili sees the same fear in his brother’s eyes that’s been controlling his life for the past ten years.

“I think,” Kili starts haltingly, brokenly, “you’re my one.” 

And Fili feels like he’s been born anew. 

He closes the space between them in half a step, and before his head has a chance to tell him to run, to leave, that he’s got everything wrong he takes Kili’s face between his hands and kisses him, slow and tentative at first, but when Kili’s lips part with what might be a groan slow and tentative becomes desperate and needy. Suddenly Kili’s hands are in his hair, pulling him closer, closer, and Fili’s arms are around his brother and he doesn’t care that he’s probably crushing him because he has waited _so long_. 

“I’m sorry,” Fili breathes between his brother’s lips, kisses him again. “I’m sorry I ran away, sorry I left you. I love you.” – and it tumbles from his heart like he’s just learning to talk. 

Kili’s fingers are calloused from his bow as they stroke across Fili’s cheeks. “And I’m sorry I took so long to grow up,” he whispers, and then Fili’s on his back on his bed with Kili astride his waist and his brother is fumbling with the ties of his shirt, ripping them apart in haste, and Fili finds that his hands fit Kili’s waist like they were made for each other. 

He catches Kili’s hands, presses slow, gentle kisses to his palms. He looks up at his brother and says, “I was lost without you.” He’s never felt so open, so exposed, so honest – and Kili’s lips are split in that beautiful beaming smile, and then he’s leaning down and kissing him, and it’s _i’m sorry_ and _you are my everything_ without a single word being said. 

They fall asleep together on that hard, narrow bed, still mostly clothed and with nothing but kisses passed between them. Fili dreams of cold blue skies and autumn trees on the mountaintop, and of his mother saying _endure, my sweet boy_ with a smile in her eyes – and in the dream he takes her hand and says _i have, dear mother, and i always will_. 

When he wakes in the morning Kili is a hot weight twined around him and their uncle is looking down at them with an uncharacteristically soft look in his eyes. When he sees Fili’s awake, Thorin says with raised eyebrow, “There’s still work to be done, you know.” 

And Fili smiles a broad, happy smile that he’s not smiled in years, and says, “There always is.”


End file.
